[lojban-beginners] habits are your friends

["Brett Williams" <mungojelly@gmail.com>]

     Lojban has a wonderfully productive grammar, which can take you as deep as you want to go into twisty mazes of sentence construction, but I don't think it's ever been emphasized enough that you don't actually have to reinvent the wheel every time you say something.  Most of the Lojban that's spoken (on IRC at least) is small variations on the same short familiar patterns.  Here's some examples: 


     "broda" 

.i cinri
  -- Interesting. (Something interests someone.) 
.i banzu 
 -- Enough. (Something is sufficient for something.)  

     Just a gismu or brivla on its own.  This sentence form is so easy that it may seem like cheating, but I assure you, this is a high-class full-fledged 100% genuine Authentic Lojbanistan Made sentence shape.  If you're worried and confused by Lojban's grammar, I encourage you to lean heavily on this shape.  You can't get it wrong, so you can't worry about getting it wrong.  Here's a story for you in this form: 

     .i smani .i xagji .i cadzu .i catlu .i plise .i viska .i djica .i cpacu .i gleki .i citka .i plise .i citka .i gleki .i smani .i surla .i sipna
      Monkey. Hungry. Walking. Looking. Apple. Seeing. Wanting. Getting. Happy. Eating. Apple. Eating. Happy. Monkey. Relaxing. Sleeping. 


     "brode broda" 

.i xamgu sipna 
 -- Good sleep. 
.i gleki kelci 
 -- Happy play. 

     You can put another gismu (or other brivla) in front of the first.  You only have to learn one feature of Lojban's grammar, the relationship between seltau (se tanru) and tertau (te tanru), in order to use this form.  Not only that, but the relationship between seltau and tertau is surprisingly easy to learn: It could be anything.  It's a primordial vagueness.  Lojban is full of this exact bland flavor of vagueness, so getting a taste for it will advance your Lojban a lot.  It's not hard to learn at all, it's just hard to swallow.  Absolutely blandly impossibly vague; no kidding. 
  Here's the same story for you using two-part tanru: 

    .i xagji smani .i cidja djica .i clani cadzu .i citka catlu .i xagji smani .i plise viska .i mutce gleki .i plise cpacu 
    Hungry monkey.  Food desire.  Long walk.  Eating look.  Hungry monkey.  Apple seeing.  Very happy.  Apple taking. 

    .i plise citka .i kukte vrusi .i gleki cinmo .i kalri kanla .i pezli surla .i morji cisma .i masno pensi .i ckire sipna 
     Apple eater. Delicious taste. Happy emotions. Open eyes. Leaf relaxing. Memory smiling. Slowly thinking. Grateful sleeper. 


     "lo brodi zo'u broda" 

.i lo plise zo'u citka 
 -- An apple; ate. 
.i lo cerni zo'u gleki 
 -- A morning; happy. 

     The word "zo'u" is used for making what's called topic-comment sentences.  The structure of a sentence with "zo'u" is that you give a list of things that you're going to talk about, and then you say "zo'u", and then you start to talk about them.  It's a useful form for some logical structures like "for all X and all Y there is some Z such that..." because it allows you to give the arguments up front in the proper order, etc.  It also, by convention (I would state the convention like this: arguments given in the prenex which do not appear in the body are assumed to have been elided in the body in some unspecified position), can be used for pithy little vague sentences like "lo finpe zo'u citka" (a fish-- eating), which is vague about the role the fish plays (whether it's eating, or being eaten, or even watching someone else eat).  In order to use this form you need to know only one place, the first place of the "brodi" brivla, which is the object referred to by the "topic" part of the sentence-- you don't have to specify what relation that object has to the "comment" bridi, so you don't have to know any of the places of that brivla. 
  Here's a "zo'u" version of our story: 

    .i lo smani zo'u xagji .i lo clani zo'u cadzu .i lo cidja zo'u djica .i lo cidja zo'u nitcu 
    A monkey-- hungering.  A long one-- walking.  Some food-- wanting.  Some food-- needing. 

    .i lo plise zo'u viska .i lo smani zo'u gleki .i lo plise zo'u cpacu .i lo  smani zo'u citka 
    An apple-- seeing.  A monkey-- feeling happy.  An apple-- getting.  A monkey-- eating. 

    .i lo pezli zo'u surla .i lo morji zo'u cisma .i lo pensi zo'u masno .i lo ckire zo'u sipna 
    Leaves-- relaxing.  A rememberer-- smiling.  A thinker-- slow.  A grateful one-- sleeping. 


     "lo brodi cu broda" 

.i lo xamgu cu klama 
 -- A good one comes. 
.i lo pimlu cu farlu 
 -- A feather falls. 

    This is  perhaps the most classic form; it's somehow stereotypical.  For this form you need to know only two x1 places, and the same object fills both of them.  The "lo" takes out a referent which is the x1 of the first brivla, and then putting that into this sentence says that it's also the x1 of the second brivla.  "lo plise cu kukte"-- the thing we're talking about is both an apple, and delicious.  As a general rule, you can reverse the two brivla and get another true sentence saying the same thing from another angle-- "lo kukte cu plise", a delicious thing is an apple. 
   Here's that story in this form: 

  .i lo smani cu xagji .i lo smani cu cadzu .i lo smani cu xagji .i lo smani cu nitcu 
  A monkey is hungry. A monkey is walking. A monkey is hungry. A monkey is needing. 

  .i lo plise cu zvati .i lo plise cu melbi .i lo smani cu cpacu .i lo smani cu gleki 
  An apple is there. An apple is beautiful. A monkey acquires. A monkey is happy. 

  .i lo plise cu kukte .i lo kukte cu plise .i lo smani cu citka .i lo smani cu nelci 
  An apple is delicious. A delicious is an apple. A monkey eats. A monkey likes. 

  .i lo smani cu surla .i lo morji cu cisma .i lo masno cu pensi .i lo ckire cu sipna 
   A monkey relaxes. A rememberer smiles. A slow one thinks. A grateful one sleeps. 




    A lot of the Lojban you'll see spoken in real life, like on #lojban, is in a simple bridi form such as those above.  They may be slightly harder to recognize in the wild, because often they will be decorated with free modifiers (evidentials, attitudinals, etc)-- when you don't know "za'a" from "zo'u", that's a lot of noise which throws you off of being able to immediately recognize the basic shape of the sentence.  Here's an example from IRC just now: 

dbrock: .i .u'i di'u jai tance nandu
(sentence link) (amusement) (previous statement) (is part of an abstraction that) (tongue) (difficult) 
Hehe, that's a tongue twister! 

    (He had just said "coi co'e co cmaci".)  The basic form here is just "ko'a brode broda", a prosumti and a tanru, pretty simple, plus there's two twists: a free modifier (.u'i) and an implicit abstraction (jai).  Here's another example: 

cmacis: .u'u mi ca citka
(sorry) (me) (now) (eating)
Sorry, I'm eating now. 

    The basic form is just "ko'a broda", a prosumti and a brivla.  The tense "ca", now, is in front of the  selbri (which is very idiomatic for tags because that's one of the places (the end of the sentence can work too) where you don't need to say "ca ku"), and ".u'u" is a free modifier.  OK one more: 

dbrock: .i na'e banzu cinri mi .u'u
(sentence link) (other than) (sufficient) (interesting) (me) (sorry)
Not interesting enough to me, sorry. 

    The basic form here is "brode broda ko'a", a tanru followed by a prosumti (putting the sumti into the x2 slot, in the case of cinri, the person interested).  So ".u'u" probably didn't throw you off, because I just mentioned that it's a free modifier, but you might not know "na'e", which is the scalar negator, other than (on an implied scale), (and which affects only the following tanru element (not the whole bridi like "na"), so  Daniel was saying that something is interesting, just not *sufficiently* interesting). 

    Most of the bridi you'll encounter in actual spoken (well, typed) Lojban are like these, very basic sentence forms with a few tiny twists that make them superficially more complicated.  Embedded bridi are more rare than simple ones, and the vast majority of embedded bridi are in very habitual familiar forms (such as the form "ko'a broda lo nu brodo" (which is so common that I've been intending to write y'all an essay sometime soon on *other* ways to use "nu". :)  (lo brodi cu nu brodo, lo nu broda cu nu brode, broda  nu brodi, etc) ) ). 

    As well as being a language of deep possibilities, Lojban is a living human language used for practical conversational purposes.  It's a large & strange toolbox, but please don't let that intimidate you; just take a few of the simple tools, and get to work seeing what they can make.  With  a few basic sentence forms at your command, it's possible to express almost anything. 

mu'o mi'e se ckiku 
(over, i'm "The Lock")